Theroigne de Mericourt

Anne-Josephe Theroigne de Mericourt (13 August 1762-9 June 1817) was a singer, orator, and organizer of the French Revolution. She was responsible for the downfall of the Jacobin Club.

Biography
Anne-Josephe Theroigne de Mericourt was born in Marcourt, Luxembourg. From 1784 to 1789 she traveled to France, Great Britain, and Italy, pursuing a career in music while also being a prostitute. In 1789 she was swept up in the early stirrings of the French Revolution, and royalists called her a "patriot's whore". She took part in the storming of the Bastille and the October Days march on Versailles, and she became a symbol of women in the revolution.

Mericourt was arrested in Liege in the Austrian Netherlands in 1790 after being accused of spying against the Austrian Empire, but she was released after it became clear that she was not a spy at all. When the Storming of the Tuileries Palace occurred on 10 August 1792, she killed the royalist pamphleteer Francois-Louis Suleau, who was responsible for many offensive writings on her.

After the French Republic was founded, she allied with the Girondists against the Jacobin Club, a group of radicals who systematically massacred priests, nobles, generals, and counter-revolutionaries in the Reign of Terror. On 15 May 1793 she was stripped naked and whipped by Jacobin women, but Jean-Paul Marat prevented her from being killed. She suffered physical and mental issues afterwards, and on 29 July 1794 she was whipped across the face while she led protesters outside of the Jacobin hideout during the Thermidorian Reaction. However, she was assisted in the "Jacobin Raid" against the Jacobin Benjamin Deschanel by the Assassin Order, who killed Deschanel and the last of the Jacobins as they tried to flee through escape tunnels in the Catacombs of Paris. Mericourt was declared insane on 20 September 1794 and sent to an insane asylum, where she died in 1817.